Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 111, No. 1. Whole No. 677, January 1998

The Thirteenth Dancer by Neil Jillett

© 1997 by Neil Jillett

Australian Neil Jillett is well qualified, to write about the dance world, for he was once the dance critic for a Melbourne newspaper and currently accepts freelance writing assignments to cover dance companies as far from each other geographically as Adelaide and Seattle. As in his previous work for EQMM, Mr. Jillett manages to weave his specialized knowledge into a crackerjack mystery plot.

He slid the carving set, in its velvet-lined, fake-walnut box, from the top drawer of the sideboard in the dining room.

“What are you up to, rattling around in there?” his mother demanded from the kitchen.

“Just looking for some string,” he shouted back. The sideboard drawers were a repository for all sorts of odds and ends, from rubber bands and exhausted ballpoints to old postage stamps that his mother fancied might turn out to be valuable one day. “A strap on my backpack’s busted.” That was true, and he’d better fix it after he had checked on the knife.

The carving set, knife, fork, and sharpening steel, all bone-handled and marked Made in Sheffield, had been among the few wedding presents his parents had been given. Twenty-eight years later, it was the only one left. Everything else had worn out or been broken or lost. The carving set had not been used since his father had run out on him and his mother and sister fifteen years ago. The dinner service his mother had bought early in the marriage had also been kept out of service. It was turquoise, decorated with a border of red, orange, and blue flowers and a band of gold, as fake as the carving set’s “walnut” box. She insisted it had become an heirloom, to be treasured and passed on to him when he married and started a family.

Every three months or so, on one of her special cleaning days, his mother would check that the unused china had not in some mysterious way been chipped or cracked. She would also take out the carving-set box and give it a polish with her duster. “I like to keep some things for best,” she would say, replacing the box in the drawer. But best, whatever that was — having visitors and not eating in the kitchen, he supposed — never came.

He ran his thumb along the knife’s edge. Not all that sharp, but the point, when he removed the cork that his mother kept on it (“You can never be too careful when it comes to knives”), looked dangerous enough, and that was what counted.

He’d need the knife only if killing turned out to be unavoidable. He didn’t really believe things would come to that, although the stirring in his gut told him he was already hoping they would. So it would be just as well to have a good knife. It seemed to him the only weapon an amateur — well, semi-amateur — could safely use. He supposed he could buy a knife in Adelaide, but what if the shops were closed when he needed to get one in a hurry? To be on the safe side, he’d arm himself in advance. His mother had done one of her big cleanups the other day. It wasn’t likely she’d miss the knife.

He stuck the cork back on the point and shoved the knife into the bottom of his backpack, under the spare socks and underpants and the bodytights that he knew he had dyed exactly the right shades — midnight blue and what he thought of as dried blood. With some string he attempted a repair job on the broken strap, but soon gave it up as not worth the trouble.

He walked through the kitchen and out to the drive and tossed the pack onto the backseat of the 1972 Holden sedan. It was a real hoon’s car to look at, ready for the junkyard, most people would reckon; but the engine was in good enough nick, and he was allowing himself plenty of time to do the 1600-mile drive, halfway across the country, from Brisbane to Adelaide. He’d have been in a rush if he’d wanted to be there for opening night, but he’d decided against that. He couldn’t risk running into Mike Gillmore, who, he’d heard on a radio program about the festival, would be in Adelaide for a few days.

Back in the kitchen, he thought how old and tired his mother looked in her faded floral apron and scruffy pink “silk” slippers, with a hairnet imprisoning an unsuccessful do-it-yourself perm; sixty at least, if you were asked to make a guess, though she still had a couple of years to go before she was fifty.

He felt only a flicker of guilt about going away again so soon. He might have found it harder to leave if her grizzling didn’t get him down so much. Sometimes he wanted to punch the old girl, to shut her up. It wasn’t like he was leaving her on her own. His sister and Bruce, the guy she was living with, would call in fairly regularly to check she was okay, and that money she’d scored in her auntie’s will a few years back meant she was never short of a dollar.

He couldn’t wait to be out of the place. And it wasn’t just that he’d be glad to go; he had to go.

“If I look like being away more than a couple of weeks, Mum,” he said, making an effort to rustle up a grin, “I’ll give you a call.”

“Give me a call anyway.” She could never pick when he was kidding her.

“Okay, if I’m near a phone.”

“Make it your business to be near one,” she snapped. Then her face softened for a moment. She went into her bedroom and took fifty dollars from the purse she kept on a shelf in the wardrobe. She returned to the kitchen and pushed the money into the pocket of his denim shirt, next to the packet of Marlboros. She pursed her lips at this evidence that he hadn’t kicked the habit she was always on about.

“Thanks, Mum” He kissed her cheek. “Well, gotta be off.”

“I wish you’d try and get a job.”

“You know I’m trying for the only job I want.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah. Oh, that’s what this trip’s all about.”

“You’ve hardly been back two months, after wasting all that time gallivanting round Germany and those other places.”

“Don’t start, Mum.” He couldn’t keep the heat from his voice, though he tried to, out of gratitude for the unexpected fifty dollars. “Be seeing you.”

She looked as if she was thinking about saying something else, perhaps have another go about his smoking, but he wasn’t going to hang round while she made up her mind. He gave a quick wave and avoided looking at her again as he backed the rattling Holden down the drive.

They were all masked, but to Bronwyn Baker they would never be anonymous. She could recognize each of them by their bodies. They were not perfect bodies, just nearly perfect, and their individuality was vital to the harmony of contrasts she encouraged in their dancing.

Danny Harkness, for instance, had slightly bowed legs. He made no attempt to hide his “deformity,” and this refusal to be embarrassed by it gave his dancing a cheeky arrogance that was its most attractive quality.

Bridget James’s broad shoulders and boldly muscled thighs and calves meant that she could never be a classically ethereal ballerina. Those legs propelled her into jumps of a height to challenge a man’s. Yet there was nothing masculine about Bridget’s style. She had the confidence of a strong, beautiful woman who took pride in what her body could do, and when she and Danny danced together, her strength and his arrogance combined, sexually and aesthetically, in a way that always excited the audience.

They had such similar, distinctive good looks — wide foreheads, voluptuously defined mouths, slanting green eyes above high cheekbones, orientally black and glossy hair, his tied back in a ponytail, hers coiled at the nape of her neck — that they were often mistaken for twins.

Now, their resemblance diminished by the uniformity imposed on the group by the masks, Danny and Bridget were dancing together, as excitingly as ever, but that was not why Bronwyn was holding her breath as she glared at the stage.

Well, at least, she thought, trying to comfort herself, it’s not opening night; no critics here, none of those nitpickers who’d rather find fault with everything than enjoy the dancing. She turned cold with the thought of how Michael Gillmore, the choreographer of Six of One, would have reacted to what was happening onstage. Thank God he’d had to go back to Germany after only a few days in Adelaide.

She nudged Robert Elston, who was sitting beside her in the seventh row of the front stalls in the Festival Theatre. “There’s thirteen up there,” she whispered.

“This piece goes so fast,” he whispered back, “I wasn’t sure whether my eyes were playing tricks.”

Bronwyn half rose from her seat, and the level of her voice rose with her. “I’ve got to get backstage.”

As Robert gripped Bronwyn’s forearm, forcing her back into her seat, a woman behind them leaned forward and murmured, “Please keep quiet.”

For the next few minutes Bronwyn managed to stay silent; but then, as the thirteenth dancer began a solo that counterpointed rather than distracted attention from the rest of the performance, she muttered, “Where the hell did he come from? What’s he up to?”

“Really!” The murmur behind them had become a hiss. “Some people.”

Robert tightened his grip on Bronwyn’s arm and put his mouth to her ear, grateful for a surge in the music that made it impossible for anyone else to hear him. “There’s nothing you can do now. You’ll have to wait till it’s over. Just be grateful he’s such a good dancer.”

“Good? He’s brilliant.” Bronwyn groaned as the music dropped several decibels. “But I’ll still kill the bastard when I get my hands on him.”

“Shut up!” The woman’s demand was loud enough to make heads turn throughout the stalls.

Robert’s grip on Bronwyn’s arm was now so tight that he was worried he might inflict some injury. She patted the restraining hand and gave him a nervous, apologetic smile — a promise that she would keep quiet — and for the remaining twenty-five minutes of Six of One she did not say a word. But she could not enjoy what she was watching, even though the intruder made it one of the most extraordinary pieces of theatre she had ever seen, and certainly the finest performance by the Australian Contemporary Dance Ensemble (ACDE) since she had formed it six years ago. There was no way she could relish the irony that her ensemble was literally living up to the nickname, Baker’s Dozen, by which it was known throughout Australia. In the world of the performing arts ridicule could kill reputations, often with a cruelly debilitating slowness, and she feared that ridicule, not admiration, would greet this performance by thirteen dancers of an internationally celebrated masterpiece that had been choreographed for only twelve.

But there was no ridicule that night, only wave after wave of astonished applause. The twelve dancers of the ACDE, their individuality subdued though not obliterated by silver masks and blue-and-red tights, took ten curtain calls, and the thirteenth dancer took the first two with them. The dancers were wobbly-kneed from their exertions and their triumph, reeling from it, too pumped up with adrenalin even to consider what they should do about the stranger.

When, within a few seconds of the opening bars of the recorded music, he had bounded onto the stage, the other dancers had immediately realized there was no sense in trying to get rid of him. He was never in their way, never at odds with the choreography or the music, a wild mixture of eighteenth-century classics and 1960s rock. It was as if every step he took, every broad or subtle movement of his body, had been plotted for him by Michael Gillmore as part of Six of One. To hustle him offstage would disrupt, or even destroy, the work as he was elegantly reshaping it. And when the others saw that he was at least as good a dancer as they were (later, they had to admit among themselves that he was much better), their initial apprehension and anger were replaced by a delight at his unfalteringly inventive skill.

It was at this point that he became their leader as well as their colleague. It was not as if he was trying to outshine them; he made them shine more brightly. He did not force them into changes, but, after a few minutes, when they had become accustomed to his presence, he did encourage them into slight variations, into the most slyly evolving nuances, that placed him at the heart of Six of One. The other dancers responded with an exhilaration, a bemused recklessness, that was close to ecstasy.

Once the thirteenth dancer had captured them, it did not occur to them to try to break free. And even if Bronwyn had been backstage there was no way, short of bringing down the curtain or pulling the plug on the recorded music, that she could have stopped the performance.

Two or four dancers regularly left the stage, regained their breath, then returned to keep the collective energy going. These exits and re-entries, unobtrusively placed, kept the piece hovering on the brink of a tremendous climax of movement. But the stranger remained onstage throughout the performance. He never seemed to relax his efforts, although Bronwyn Baker noted, with bitter admiration, the cunning with which he paced himself so that he rarely appeared to be dancing at less than full throttle.

While the applause was still pounding in from the stalls and circle, Bronwyn and Robert Elston, who was the ACDE’s manager, hurried backstage.

“Where is he?” she shouted. “Where’s that bastard got to?”

There was silence for a few minutes. Then Danny Harkness said, “He seems to have shot through.”

Danny had untied his ponytail, and Bridget had uncoiled her bun. Their faces were framed by shoulder-length hair in a way that heightened their extraordinary resemblance. It seemed to Bronwyn that they were playacting, making an ill-timed game of how much they looked alike. She could have knocked those beautiful heads together.

“That’s a very helpful observation, Danny, I’m sure,” she sneered. “Thank God Mike Gillmore wasn’t here to see the fiasco.”

“What fiasco, Bron?” Bridget asked. She waved her arm towards the auditorium. The applause had stopped, but there was still an excited buzz from the other side of the curtain. “Listen to that.”

The thirteenth dancer might not have escaped so easily, might not have escaped at all, if the ACDE had been a bigger company. It operated tightly on a small budget, without a stage manager, and relied on temporary stagehands to ensure that things ran smoothly.

The stagehands that night were not dance fans. Without props to handle or scenery to shift, they spent most of the time playing cards, their backs to the performance. They had no idea that, at least in Bronwyn’s estimation, an emergency had erupted. No one had told them to keep count of the dancers.

The thirteenth dancer had assumed that security on the stage door would be tight, but it was far more lax than he had experienced in any of the European theatres where he had danced. No one questioned him as he explored backstage. No one interrupted him when, having found an empty dressing room, he prepared for his performance.

He pulled off the shaggy, dirty-blond wig and matching moustache and slid out of the workman’s overalls he had worn over his tights. His mask — no time-consuming fuss getting makeup right — and dancing shoes were in an electrician’s toolbox. The knife was there, too, just in case. He could not imagine any circumstances that would force him to use it that night, but the thought that he might need it eventually was much stronger than it had been when he’d opened the sideboard drawer in Brisbane.

Thirty-five minutes later the wig, moustache, and overalls were back on. The doorkeeper did not even look up as the thirteenth dancer walked out into the night.

In his motel room he had two quick cigarettes, lighting one from the butt of the other and dragging hard at the smoke. He was surprised to find himself so hungry for the taste. He despised smoking. Usually, it was only the edginess of being near his mother that drove him back to the habit. His mother... He rang his mother. She took a long time to answer.

“I think I’ve got that job, Mum.”

“What job?”

“With a dance company here in Adelaide.”

“Oh.” The syllable suggested boredom, if it suggested anything.

“I’ve just had an audition, sort of.”

“Funny time for an audition.”

“Glad you’re so pleased for me, Mum.”

“I am, Son.” She was trying now, he had to admit, to put some enthusiasm into her voice. “It’s just that...”

“I know, Mum. You were hoping I’d got a real job.”

“I really am pleased for you, Son. It’s just that I should be getting back to bed. I’ve had my tablets.” A pause, then she repeated, “I really am pleased for you, Son. And perhaps getting the job will encourage you to lay off the—”

“Perhaps it will, Mum.” That’s the least of your worries about me, old girl, he mouthed silently. He lit another Marlboro and puffed smoke into the receiver as he hung up. “Sleep tight, Mum.”

As he ran the night’s performance through his mind, he shuddered with the conflicting tensions he always felt after he’d fooled people, shoved himself right into the middle of things, especially in a place he’d never been to before. His mind bounced brutally between clarity and confusion: decisive one moment, muddled as all hell the next.

He took the knife from the toolbox in which he had carried it to the theatre and put it under his pillow. He was not sure why he did this — and before he lay down he returned the knife to the box. The way things had gone tonight, it was unlikely he’d need it, although it was a worry about Danny Harkness. He hadn’t known Danny was in the ACDE, and though he’d picked him straight off — those bandy legs were a dead giveaway — he was pretty sure Danny hadn’t recognized him. So it should be all right, especially as Danny didn’t know his real name or where he came from.

That thought made him wonder where Danny lived. He consulted the phone book on the bedside table. There was a Harkness, Daniel Tomas listed at a place in the suburb of Glenelg. He remembered how Danny used to make a performance of having an ordinary middle name spelt an extraordinary way (“Well, it’s extraordinary if you’re not Hungarian, and I’m not”). He might call Danny later. Maybe, maybe not. He always woke up a couple of times during the night — his overactive brain, he supposed.

His imagination was going full blast. He climbed out of bed and put the knife back under the pillow. You can’t count on things not coming unstuck just because they couldn’t look better... It felt like insurance having the knife near him, ready for use. As he closed his eyes, he imagined a redness sliding along the blade. The image was so vivid he almost turned the pillow over to see if it was stained with blood.

When they had showered and were back in their street clothes, Bronwyn gathered the dancers around her.

“Sorry about blowing my top before,” she said. “You all coped marvelously.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s take this slowly. See if we can make some sort of sense of what happened. Did anyone recognize him?”

Danny Harkness opened his mouth, then shut it. He coughed and said, “He was wearing a mask, just like ours.”

Bronwyn had the impression he had been about to. say something else. “I was hoping one of you might have known him, spotted something about his physique or style that rang a bell.”

When the dancers shook their heads, she said quietly, as if afraid of eavesdroppers, “Please, not a word about this to anyone. God only knows what Mike Gillmore would do if he heard.”

“Surely he’d be pleased?” Bridget James said. “It seemed exactly what Mike Gillmore would have done if he’d used thirteen dancers.”

“The point is,” Bronwyn irritably reminded her, “Mike choreographed it for twelve, because that’s the way he...”

The sentence trailed off as she realized that, having begun to recover from the brain-freezing effect of the night’s performance, she knew who the thirteenth dancer was, although she did not know his name or where he came from or where she might find him.

The acclaim the ACDE received when it danced Six of One — the last item of a triple bill — on the opening night of the Adelaide Festival had enhanced the sense of amazed gratitude Bronwyn Baker felt at acquiring the work so easily.

When she had gone to Munich a year ago, she had hardly dared to hope that she would return to Adelaide with Mike Gillmore’s permission for the ACDE to dance his internationally acclaimed masterpiece, the first work he had devised when he became artistic director of the Munich Dance Theatre. He allowed her to have Six of One because it would be the centerpiece of the ACDE’s program at the Adelaide Festival. Leading ensembles and soloists representing all the performing arts from around the world would be at the festival, along with an international clutch of influential critics; and, for all the fame he had achieved, Mike Gillmore was always happy to garner a new clutch of reviews for his scrapbook.

“I’ve always liked Australian dancers,” he told Bronwyn in Munich. “They stretch themselves right past what you think they’re capable of. We get them through here regularly, though they don’t stay all that long...”

“They probably get extra homesick, being so much further from home than everyone else,” Bronwyn said. “It’s easy to mistake that for unreliability.”

“Not much for me to complain about on that score,” Gillmore said. “Though we did have one Aussie oddball through only a few months back. I could never decide whether he was a card-carrying crazy or just a weirdo.”

“That’s not much of a choice,” Bronwyn said lightly. She was concerned that Gillmore’s recollection of how one of her countrymen had behaved could be a problem in her negotiations for Six of One.

“I haven’t the vaguest what his real name was.” Gillmore frowned and smiled at the memory. “He was a great dancer, no denying that. But he had this trouble sticking to the choreography, though he was always saying how much he admired my stuff. After a few performances he’d start changing pieces as he went along. Probably had quite a choreographic gift, something to be encouraged. But not when he’s dancing in my work!”

Still worried that whatever this crazy Australian had done might dissuade Gillmore from giving her Six of One, Bronwyn asked, “Did he cause any other trouble?”

“Hard to put a finger on it. Something about him — a hint of barely repressed violence, perhaps — upset the other dancers. They couldn’t praise his dancing enough, but he was an unsettling influence.”

Gillmore’s tone suggested that he did not want to continue criticizing one Australian to another. “Anyway, he left us after a few months. I heard he — or some other Aussie like him — turned up in Frankfurt and Stuttgart and got himself into companies, and into some sort of trouble. There were some stories on the grapevine from Switzerland as well.”

A few hours after the thirteenth dancer’s unscheduled debut with the ACDE, Bridget James said to Danny Harkness as they lay in bed, “You were thinking about something else, weren’t you?”

“Sorry.”

She slid her fingers gently along his sweat-filmed chest. “Nothing to apologize for. Not great, but it’ll do to be going on with.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“I wasn’t complaining, Danny; just making a comment. You didn’t have your mind on the job.”

“The job! Pardon me if—”

“Stop dodging what’s really on your mind.” When Danny said nothing she added, “You know who he is, don’t you?”

There was a long pause before Danny said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s crazy.”

“We all are, to be in this business. A life of pain and five minutes of fame, if we’re lucky. But he’s a great dancer.”

“Better than us, and we’re bloody good.”

“So why not talk about him?”

Danny put an arm around Bridget’s shoulders, and for a few moments she thought he was not going to say anything more. Then he gave a nervous laugh, an embarrassed giggle. “To tell the truth, even thinking about him makes me nervous.” Danny was silent again, but Bridget sensed he would say more if she let him take his time.

“He was in the National Ballet School during my last year,” he said at last. “That was in ninety-one, the year before I came to Adelaide to join the ACDE. He was a late entrant. He said he was eighteen, a year older than me, but I reckon he was into his twenties. He boasted the way little kids do, but all the same there was something sort of very adult about him. He was always talking about forming his own company, or taking one over. ‘Whatever’s necessary,’ he’d say. He was going to be director, principal dancer, and choreographer.”

“Well, he can certainly dance, and he seems to have something as a choreographer.”

“He just turned up at the school in Melbourne and somehow wangled a special audition. Brilliant, as you’d expect, but he didn’t last long.”

Bridget felt that Danny had said enough to respond to some gentle prompting. “What happened?”

“There were stories he was flogging drugs to other students, the juniors, and making some pretty heavy threats when they got behind with their payments.”

“Nasty.”

“A couple of students were hauled out of the school by their parents, quick smart,” Danny said. “It looked like there was going to be a bloody great scandal, but somehow it was hushed up.”

“And Twinkle Toes?”

“He disappeared. I suppose he got the shove, but maybe he just went.”

“Where did he come from?”

“Who knows? He called himself Mikhail Oblonski, would you believe! Or something like that. Whatever, he’d have to have made it up. Quite a few of the kids at the school gave themselves stage names. They wouldn’t answer to anything else.” Danny frowned. “Why’s he come to Adelaide?”

“To dance in Six of One, obviously.”

“Yeah. But I wonder if he’s got anything else in mind.”

By ten o’clock on the morning after the thirteenth dancer’s “audition” there had been more than twenty calls to the ACDE’s office, all congratulating Bronwyn Baker and her ensemble on the performance of Six of One, although no one appeared to have spotted the extra dancer onstage.

Bronwyn responded politely to the congratulations, but they only made it more difficult for her to stop worrying about the thirteenth dancer; about the possibility that he might appear again, about the ridicule if the word got out that the ACDE’s finest performance had occurred because of something beyond her control. She decided to escape into work. “Keep all calls away from me, Bev, if you value my sanity,” she told her office manager.

At ten-thirty, when a caller demanded to speak to Bronwyn Baker, Bev said, “I’m afraid you can’t; she’s taking class.”

“It’s very important and very personal.” The caller refused to state his name (“It wouldn’t mean anything to her”) or business, but his tone persuaded Bev that she should interrupt the class.

When the call was transferred, he told Bronwyn, without preliminary, “I was hoping to join your company.”

“As what?”

“As a dancer, of course.”

“I’m afraid there are no vacancies.” Right around the country, there were far more dancers than places for them in companies. Bronwyn, instinctively sympathetic to anyone in search of a job, tried to soften rejection by explaining, “I never have more than twelve dancers. It’s exactly the right number for our sort of choreography.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

Still wrung out, mentally and physically, by the previous night’s drama, Bronwyn did not pick up the innuendo in the caller’s voice. “And on our budget,” she said, “we couldn’t afford even one more than twelve, even if I wasn’t superstitious. So I’m afraid there’s not even any point in giving you an audition.”

“Well, in my case, an audition’s hardly necessary.”

There was now an unmistakable edge of sarcasm to the voice at the other end of the line, and Bronwyn knew who the caller was when he demanded, “What more do I have to do to persuade you to hire me?”

Flustered, not sure how she should respond to such a question from a man she knew must be mad, Bronwyn could think of no reply except, “Hope for a vacancy, I suppose.”

“You said it, not me.”

There was a click at the other end. Bronwyn, trembling, held on to the receiver for a few moments before hanging up.

A café in Hindley Street gave a clear view of the door of the ACDE’s office and rehearsal rooms. The thirteenth dancer, back in his overalls and wig and moustache, sat there drinking coffee, smoking, and pretending to read a paperback, Great Dancers of the Twentieth Century. He was prepared to be patient — now, as he waited for Danny to appear, then later, when... First get into the company, then work out how to take it over.

At five-thirty Danny Harkness and Bridget James and other dancers came out onto the street.

“I suppose you really have to go?” Bridget said, knowing it was mean of her to try to persuade him out of it.

“He’s the only relative I’ve got in Adelaide, and it’s his birthday.”

“When you come from a small family like mine,” Bridget said, “it takes getting used to someone with aunts and uncles all over the place.”

“You wouldn’t want too many uncles like my Uncle Gareth. But if you fancy a taste of what it’s like, don’t forget you were invited.”

“I really don’t enjoy boozy parties.”

“It’ll certainly be that, the old bugger turning sixty.”

“And it’s not as if I’ve met him.” Bridget sighed. “I’m not trying to be a misery-guts. But it’s only a month since I moved in with you. I feel like I’m still on the honeymoon.”

“Me too,” Danny said, pressing against her.

“You’d better get going.” Bridget kissed him, hard. “Before someone comes along with a bucket of cold water.”

“I shouldn’t be too late,” Danny said over his shoulder, and winked.

Watching them from the café as they set off in opposite directions along Hindley Street, the thirteenth dancer said under his breath, “You had me worried there for a minute, Danny boy. I thought she wasn’t going to stop at kissing you. Whatever that little tiff was. about, you still should have invited her home to bed. She was really asking for it. But you can still do the right thing by me. Make sure you’re safely tucked up and sound asleep by midnight. I want it neat and tidy. No mess.”

He’s a bit girlish, but still a good-looking guy, the thirteenth dancer thought, as Danny, long hair swinging in time with his stride, disappeared around a corner, presumably heading for the tram that would take him to his flat in Glenelg.

The thirteenth dancer imagined dark hair spread out, like a shadow, against sheets... features in profile softened, made more feminine, by moonlight through curtains... a smoothly muscled back exposed.

There was nothing about it in the newspaper that came with the breakfast delivered to his motel room. Too soon for there to be anything on the radio, either. He wondered — it was a crazy idea, he knew, but, all the same, it would be great if it worked out that way — he wondered if he could time his arrival at the ACDE’s office to coincide with some broadcast announcement by the cops...

Two hours later, rattling towards Hindley Street in the Holden, he turned on the radio for a last check for any news.

There were good cooking smells, unusual in his mother’s house, when he walked through the back door into the kitchen.

“Special occasion?” he asked. “Celebrating your favorite son’s return.” He gave his mother a quick kiss. Against his forehead, her new perm felt cold and slimy.

“I might have done, if you’d let me know you were coming home.”

“Sorry about that, Mum. Every time I found a phone I didn’t have change.”

“So you say.” She looked up from chopping mint to go with the roast lamb. “I thought you were staying in Adelaide. That business you rang about, the audition and getting a job.”

“Things didn’t quite work out the way I thought they would; not quite like I planned.”

“Oh, yes.” If she was interested, her voice gave no hint. “When you’ve had a wash-up you can set the table. I was just getting around to it.”

“So what is the big occasion?”

“Gloria and Bruce are announcing their engagement. Just a small family celebration. His parents are coming over.”

“So he’s got her pregnant at last?”

“You’ve always had a dirty mind,” said his mother, maintaining the pretence that her daughter was still “just friendly” with the man she had been living with for three years.

“And you’ll make a lovely grandma.” He was rather proud of himself, full of jokes when he had so much on his mind, though he was pretty sure no one had seen him at Glenelg. “Well,” he said, “like you told me, I’d better go and wash up.”

A few minutes later, as the thirteenth dancer set the table in the dining room, his mother called from the kitchen, “Make sure you get out the good china, those nice floral plates and things I like to keep for best.”

“Okay, Mum.”

“The carving set, too — it’s in the top drawer. You’re the man of the house, Son, so put yourself at the head of the table. When there’s a roast and visitors, it’s nice if the man of the house carves at the table. Makes a real occasion of things. Don’t forget to sharpen the knife.”

“In a minute, Mum,” he said, going out to the car to collect his backpack.

“Where are you off to now?”

“Won’t be a tick. Just remembered something.”

Back in the dining room, he took the knife from the pack as his mother called out again. “You still haven’t really told me what happened about that job.”

“Not much to tell, Mum.”

“What about the audition you had? Wasn’t there a vacancy for you, after all? I’ve told you all along, till I’m blue in the face, there’s just too many of you boys wanting to be dancers and not enough jobs to go round. And all that smoking doesn’t help, if you want to be in shape.”

The thirteenth dancer waited patiently for her to finish. He thought how much he’d like a cigarette, the first since he’d left Adelaide. But she’d only be on at him if he lit up in the house.

“There was a vacancy, Mum,” he said, placing the knife beside the carving fork at the head of the table. “But it turned out to be for a girl.”